| React Native: A Brief |

With the rapid growth of smartphones and technology in the market, modern day businesses have seen a good amount of change in the recent times. And whether you are a promising online business or someone who is looking to start one, having a mobile app is something you should be considered before anything else. You might wonder what does React Native has to do with all of this. Well, we will answer this question but first, let’s discover more about React Native.

React Native: An Introduction

React Native is a framework that was introduced by Facebook in the year 2015 for data-driven web interfaces. It provides a component driven architecture that is easily accessible and uses a declarative syntax. This framework was developed just because Facebook wanted to develop consistent technologies and goals that allow the developers to build an application using the same set of principles across all platforms. For achieving this goal they enforced the same set of principles that they had, for example, stateful components, virtual dom, layout engine, and many others to both ios and Android platforms to test them out.

So what is the difference between React and React Native?

React was originally created for web user interfaces. The mantra behind React has been “Learn Once, Write Anywhere”.

The benefit of React and React Native is that if you understand how to build a React Native app for iOS, you understand how to build a React Native app for Android. It’s learning once, write anywhere.

Libraries like Phone gap provide a wrapper around a web user interface using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. React Native provides a virtual DOM representation which then provides native controls. It is able to take native platform components like switches, sliders, tab bars, labels and wrap them in React component counterparts without any problem.

The Advantages of React Native

Let’s discuss the good parts of using this Framework for your Mobile Application Development.

Payless, get more:

One of the most crucial advantages of React Native that acts as its premium selling point is that it provides two applications for the price is one(for some cases three). Even though you might encounter some technical issues which are the case in most of the applications the development efficiency that this framework provides is completely cost effective.

Instant feedback:

Since this framework comes with dev menu it allows the developers to view the changes that they have made by simply reloading the application. The point is that this makes the app fast. All the developer has to do is to make the necessary changes and reload the app and within a couple of seconds, the updates are done. There is no need for them to rebuild the entire application which can be a waste of time and also extremely annoying.

The developer can use almost the same codebase that they use for building Web Application for building Mobile applications based on React Native. They just need to take the boilerplate that they would normally use to build web applications based on React and replace “react” with “React Native” along with changing the way application is mounting and swap the routing with React Native navigator. Everything else is just the same.

UI codebase is (almost) the same for both Android and iOS:

There are some changes that need to be done (especially for ios) for example scrolling the input when focusing. Also, Native Picker is the standard select input in Android but looks different in ios. Other than that, there are no serious issues with writing UIs.

Writing UI in a declarative way:

One of the biggest React Native advantages is its declarative way of writing user interfaces. It makes writing UIs much less painful compared to an imperative style of the native platform.

The Drawbacks of React Native

Seeing that the first public release of React Native was about three years ago it’s quite common that the framework might have certain lacks due to the stability of a mature technology that has been introduced after that. However, there are also other downsides you should know about. We have listed some of them below.

Leaky abstractions:

If you want to install a package with a native API you will require using a special tool called rpm (which previously is a separate tool but now is merged into React Native). The problem is that it doesn’t always work. For example, when you need to install a package manually, all there is left to do is hope that the package maintainer had the trouble to provide relevant documentation. The manual installation procedure boils down to adding some Java/ObjC code (depending on platform) which may feel like conjuring some black magic if you’ve never worked with native platforms before.

You need to apply real devices for testing & throughout the development:

Though it is too obvious for native developers, we are going to say it anyway: don’t rely on emulators only. Despite the fact that real devices and emulators assist in finding subtle UI discrepancies, it’s better to not take any chances and adhere to using real devices for the development.

You need to find out what is the native mobile platform:

you want to be effective you need to have an experience in the native environment and be prepared if you encounter any bug in the React native package. To solve this problem you might need some help from mobile developers who usually are experienced with React and React Native. You need to be well informed about it when choosing React Native framework to develop your next application.

React Native packager may lose connection from time to time:

The React Native packager may lose connection when you haven’t reloaded the code for some time and then disconnect the device to launch the packager again which can be annoying. And one more thing is that sometimes you need to start with resetting the cache through `npm start — —reset-cache`.

Learn how to ship mobile applications:

This point isn’t quite related to React Native, but unless you’re building an application that isn’t going to be released to the public, you need to learn how to set up mobile applications. For Androiders, this would be just another trivial procedure. When it comes to iOS, though, rearranging mobile applications is a total mess and a difficult task. Another thing about the building stage is that you can select from various tools for shipping React Native apps. For Example, Microsoft’s CodeRush service is one of the most interesting ones to perform the job. Basically, it sees React Native as an accumulate JS app so you don’t really need to go through build/release/review cycle. Instead, you just need to push new changes and let the service take care of updating the end clients. You don’t have to be a genius to figure out how much time this approach saves.

One of the unique features of React native is that it is cross-platform in nature. Initially, this framework was built for iOS and later on it adopted Android support as well. Due to the hybrid nature of the application that is built on this framework makes React Native one of the most preferred frameworks. Another benefit of choosing this framework is that the development for both iOS and Android can be executed simultaneously with the help of a single codebase and therefore be leading to lower cost.

JavaScript Coding:

For a developer, it is essentially easier to develop with React Native which might not be the case otherwise as you will essentially need to learn Swift for iOS or Java for Android. All you need to know are basic UI elements and design patterns. This is possible due to the library that Reacts Native consists which includes debugging, inline styling, Flexbox CSS styling and deployment support that help to upload the app on App Store and Google Play. Another benefit that React Native provides is that if you are a web app development company you do not require external(or separate) developer to work on React Native as some of your existing developers might already be well versed with JavaScript.

Reusability:

React Native is famous for the reusability feature that makes it less tedious. It also offers a fast and rapid app development. The word Reusability can be used in a context that you can incorporate React Native components into your mobile app along with reusing it with a plug-in. This is far easier and quicker if your earlier app was built using frameworks like Ionic or Cordova and for a developer this signals effectiveness and boosts their productivity.

Supported by Facebook and Open Source:

React Native is built by Facebook developers and is open source. Being open source software it helps the developers all over to inspect and suggest changes to make the app more efficient. This not only benefits the developers to use it freely without any additional charges but also gives them an additional advantage of fixing bugs and along with other added features.

Easy to understand UI:

Even though the overall look and feel of both Android and iOS Applications is quite different and the design guidelines can turn out to be a hassle and difficult to navigate, if the developers are using React Native it is quite simple as this framework is focused in developing mobile UI in comparison to other JavaScript frameworks like MeteorJS and AngularJS. This makes the UI more responsive and makes it easier to understand and easy to navigate.

7 Reasons Why Facebook’s React Native Is the Future of Hybrid App Development

In the world of mobile app development, where developers are always looking forward to quicker time to deployment, shorter development cycles and better app performance on the only two operating systems that are currently dominating the landscape, businesses that are creating mobile apps often face a dilemma: To develop applications that provide a better user experience or developing applications that are faster to develop and run on more platforms and devices? These two decisions are often too hard to come to a conclusion to.

Hybrid app frameworks have come a long way to bridge the hole between the performance of a native application and maintaining the consistency in the ease of development of a web application. On the leading front of this technology is Facebook’s own React Native user interface (UI) designed framework. Here’s a brief peek at how this impressive JavaScript library is winning the game for hybrid mobile applications.

IT’S GOTTEN BOTH IOS AND ANDROID COVERED.

THEY UTILIZE REUSABLE COMPONENTS WHICH EXEMPT HYBRID APPLICATION’S AND ALLOW THEM TO CONTRIBUTE NATIVELY.

THE DEVELOPERS CAN APPLY REACT NATIVE UI COMPONENTS TO AN EXISTING APPLICATION’S CODE—WITHOUT ANY REWRITING REQUIRED.

IT’S ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR MOBILE JAVASCRIPT FRAMEWORKS AMONG DEVELOPERS—AND IS CONSTANTLY GROWING.

REACT NATIVE HAS A MAIN FOCUS ON THE UI.

INCREASED EFFICIENCY IN NATIVE APP DEVELOPMENT

IT PROVIDES A THIRD-PARTY PLUGIN COMPATIBILITY WITH LESS MEMORY USAGE AND A SMOOTHER EXPERIENCE.

Popular Apps that are written with React Native

Till now the idea of creating Mobile Applications using only one paradigm for all platforms seemed a bit unreal. Even though React Native is sometimes considered as a little immature, it empowers to speed up the process of building apps across different platforms, due to the possibility of reusing most of the code between them. There is no doubt in saying that many organizations settle for React Native for their mobile App Development. Mentioned below are few fortune 500 companies that have leveraged to React Native to their Production.

Facebook

Skype

Airbnb

Instagram

Wal-Mart

Facebook Ads

Sound Cloud Pulse

Yeti Smart Home

Uber Eats

Conclusion

React Native is a good alternative for your next mobile application, if:

you want to develop an MVP for both platforms(Android and iOS) within a short period of time and with a minimum budget;

you don’t need a sophisticated UI (e.g. complex custom animations) or it’s not your main priority at the moment;

The application that you are developing isn’t supposed to heavily use native API. In case there is no ready-to-use package for some range of capabilities, you will need to implement it on your own by writing a React Native wrapper.

Moreover, React Native can be an ultimate tool for those developers who:

have mobile native development experience in one of the platforms (both iOS and Android which is even better);

Have immense exposure to modern JS and React.

If that’s the case, they will be definitely more efficient in using React Native than the native platform. Finally, considering our professional experience of React Native and how it has evolved we strongly conclude by saying that the framework will succeed in becoming a great solution.